1
" No matter what a person does to cover up and conceal themselves, when we write and lose control, I can spot a person from Alabama, Florida, South Carolina a mile away even if they make no exact reference to location. Their words are lush like the land they come from, filled with nine aunties, people named Bubba. There is something extravagant and wild about what they have to say — snakes on the roof of a car, swamps, a delta, sweat, the smell of sea, buzz of an air conditioner, Coca-Cola — something fertile, with a hidden danger or shame, thick like the humidity, unspoken yet ever-present. Often when a southerner reads, the members of the class look at each other, and you can hear them thinking, gee, I can't write like that. The power and force of the land is heard in the piece. These southerners know the names of what shrubs hang over what creek, what dogwood flowers bloom what color, what kind of soil is under their feet. I tease the class, " Pay no mind. It's the southern writing gene. The rest of us have to toil away. "
2
" Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited. No smoke came from the chimney, and the little lattice windows gaped forlorn. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done, but as I advanced I was aware that a change had come upon it; it was narrow and unkempt, not the drive that we had known. At first I was puzzled and did not understand, and it was only when I bent my head to avoid the low swinging branch of a tree that I realized what had happened. Nature had come into her own again, and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way, had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers. The woods, always a menace even in the past, had triumphed in the end. They crowded, dark and uncontrolled, to the orders of the drive. The beeches with white, naked limbs leant close to one another, their branches intermingled in a strange embrace, making a vault above my head like the archway of a church. And there were other trees as well, trees that I did not recognize, squat oaks and tortured elms that straggled cheek by jowl with the beeches, and had thrust themselves out of the quiet earth, along with monster shrubs and plants, none of which I remembered surely the miles had multiplied, even as the trees had done, and this path led but to a labyrinth, some choked wilderness, and not to the house at all. I cam upon it suddenly There was Manderley secretive and silent as it had always been, the grey stone shining in the moonlight of my dream, the mullioned windows reflecting the green lawns and the terrace. Time could not wreck the perfect symmetry of those walls nor the site itself, a jewel in the hollow of a hand.” Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca, 1938. "
5
" If we want to use a physical analogy, a more accurate one would show that many of our beliefs are like boulders pushed off from the top of a mountain. The boulder tips, and the thousands of contours of the mountainside, along with any trees (or lack thereof), its hardness, etc., react to the shape, size, and contours of the boulder itself. Rainfalls alter how much cushion the earth gives when the boulder slams into it and how much trees and shrubs will bend before breaking. All of these variables mix and, based on its bounces and rotations, the boulder lands in a very specific spot at the bottom. In many ways, this is how we form many of our beliefs—by countless, unique mental influences pushing us this way and that. "
7
" As I became older, I was given many masks to wear. I could be a laborer laying railroad tracks across the continent, with long hair in a queue to be pulled by pranksters; a gardener trimming the shrubs while secretly planting a bomb; a saboteur before the day of infamy at Pearl Harbor, signaling the Imperial Fleet; a kamikaze pilot donning his headband somberly, screaming 'Banzai' on my way to my death; a peasant with a broad-brimmed straw hat in a rice paddy on the other side of the world, stooped over to toil in the water; an obedient servant in the parlor, a houseboy too dignified for my own good; a washerman in the basement laundry, removing stains using an ancient secret; a tyrant intent on imposing my despotism on the democratic world, opposed by the free and the brave; a party cadre alongside many others, all of us clad in coordinated Mao jackets; a sniper camouflaged in the trees of the jungle, training my gunsights on G.I. Joe; a child running with a body burning from napalm, captured in an unforgettable photo; an enemy shot in the head or slaughtered by the villageful; one of the grooms in a mass wedding of couples, having met my mate the day before through our cult leader; an orphan in the last airlift out of a collapsed capital, ready to be adopted into the good life; a black belt martial artist breaking cinderblocks with his head, in an advertisement for Ginsu brand knives with the slogan 'but wait--there's more' as the commercial segued to show another free gift; a chef serving up dog stew, a trick on the unsuspecting diner; a bad driver swerving into the next lane, exactly as could be expected; a horny exchange student here for a year, eager to date the blonde cheerleader; a tourist visiting, clicking away with his camera, posing my family in front of the monuments and statues; a ping pong champion, wearing white tube socks pulled up too high and batting the ball with a wicked spin; a violin prodigy impressing the audience at Carnegie Hall, before taking a polite bow; a teen computer scientist, ready to make millions on an initial public offering before the company stock crashes; a gangster in sunglasses and a tight suit, embroiled in a turf war with the Sicilian mob; an urban greengrocer selling lunch by the pound, rudely returning change over the counter to the black patrons; a businessman with a briefcase of cash bribing a congressman, a corrupting influence on the electoral process; a salaryman on my way to work, crammed into the commuter train and loyal to the company; a shady doctor, trained in a foreign tradition with anatomical diagrams of the human body mapping the flow of life energy through a multitude of colored points; a calculus graduate student with thick glasses and a bad haircut, serving as a teaching assistant with an incomprehensible accent, scribbling on the chalkboard; an automobile enthusiast who customizes an imported car with a supercharged engine and Japanese decals in the rear window, cruising the boulevard looking for a drag race; a illegal alien crowded into the cargo hold of a smuggler's ship, defying death only to crowd into a New York City tenement and work as a slave in a sweatshop.My mother and my girl cousins were Madame Butterfly from the mail order bride catalog, dying in their service to the masculinity of the West, and the dragon lady in a kimono, taking vengeance for her sisters. They became the television newscaster, look-alikes with their flawlessly permed hair.Through these indelible images, I grew up. But when I looked in the mirror, I could not believe my own reflection because it was not like what I saw around me. Over the years, the world opened up. It has become a dizzying kaleidoscope of cultural fragments, arranged and rearranged without plan or order. "
8
" It was a perfect spring day. The air was sweet and gentle and the sky stretched high, an intense blue. Harold was certain that the last time he had peered through the net drapes of Fossebridge Road (his home), the trees and hedges were dark bones and spindles against the skyline; yet now that he was out, and on his feet, it was as if everywhere he looked, the fields, gardens, trees, and hedgerows and exploded with growth. A canopy of sticky young leaves clung to the branches above him. There were startling yellow clouds of forsythia, trails of purple aubrietia; a young willow shook in a fountain of silver. The first of the potato shoots fingered through the soil, and already tiny buds hung from the gooseberry and currant shrubs like the earrings Maureen used to wear. The abundance of new life was enough to make him giddy. "
― Rachel Joyce , The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Harold Fry, #1)
10
" Black snowflakes creep down from the sky, advancing slowly, methodically. All the money in the world, which my father seems to have, can’t keep the demons from chasing me ⎯ Aishling Morrighan Delaney, a.k.a. princess of Clan Delaney. Everything is messed up. I’m wearing the “Happy Birthday” sash across my chest that my best friend, Claire, had always insisted I wear for my special day, but this is not that day. My twentieth birthday was over a month ago, on October 31, the night of Samhain, the Celtic New Year’s Eve.This is December 7th, and the Ten Colds Moon is rising. My fate stalks me. Doesn’t look like I’m going to make it to my belated birthday party. I lean into my horse, Kheelan, as he tears across the bracken and bramble moor, and beyond through the amethyst fields of devil’s bit, for a moment outrunning the faerie’s freak show. The spiky shrubs of the moor bite my legs as we attempt to outrun the Fates and the black snow that comes like a gathering sandstorm, trailing me. This princess thing in Ireland can get a girl killed fast, or maybe it’s just me. I am the faerie slayer of the seventh order and the 28th generation, the prophesied Gael Siridean, the Searcher. As such, my head is crowned with a supernatural bounty, and the price is high…The thread of my life frays rapidly, as does the hem of this black velvet medieval-style dress I borrowed from my best friend, Claire. She’s throwing me a themed party this year. If I make it out of this alive tonight, she’s going to kill me for ruining her dress and causing her more worry. Maybe she’ll grant me mercy when she takes in my drenched, haggard appearance with thistle strewn throughout my hair and dark eyeliner no doubt leaving claw marks down my cheeks. I can’t tell her what really happened here tonight. I can’t tell anyone. "
11
" You clumsy wench—Gods above! Are you trying to rob me, girl?” The nobleman seizes my wrist and yanks it from his pocket. My hand comes up with the pipe clenched in it. I stare at him, horrified.
“I . . .”
“I’ll have your head for this!” the man rages. “I’ll have you whipped!”
***
“I got the pipe,” I say, holding it up.
He stares for a minute, blinking, and then bursts into laughter. A few curious deer stick their heads through the shrubs to see what the racket is. Aladdin doubles over, laughing loud enough to startle birds from the trees overhead, and after a moment, I start laughing too. I haven’t laughed this hard in a long, long while, and it feels wonderful. We sit on the grass and laugh until our faces are red and we’re out of breath.
“You are the worst thief I have ever seen,” declares Aladdin.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I got it, didn’t I?”
“My grandmother could pick pockets better than that! Though that’s not quite fair; my grandmother was the best pickpocket in Parthenia. She taught me all her tricks. Drove my mother crazy. "
― Jessica Khoury , The Forbidden Wish
